Category Archives: Holy Spirit Baptism

First level doctrines are absolutes that are non-negotiable such as inspiration of scripture, virgin birth, deity of Christ,justification by faith alone, the resurrection, and the gospel of Christ. Denial of one or all is clear denial of the Christian faith. This means we should never fellowship with,embrace, or sanction anyone who denies cardinal doctrines of the faith.

Second level beliefs are those that distinguish one church or denomination from another. These involve issues such as frequency of the Lord’s table, mode of baptism, continuationism, cessationistionism, complimentarian, egalitarian. These things may identify and distinguish but must never become grounds for close fellowship and certainly should never become the “litmus test” for whether one is viewed as being Christian.

Third level doctrines are non-essential beliefs. What time your church service starts, multisite video campuses, eschatological beliefs regarding pre-mid-post tribulation period, and views about the millennium.

John MacArthur has elevated second tier beliefs regarding charismatic gifts to first level essentials for defining who is and is not Christian. To borrow a friends term, that’s just Poppycock!

MacArthur is “off the gospel reservation” and is guilty of causing the very chaos he is supposedly warning others about. I say this as one who has throughly enjoyed his ministry over the years and have greatly benefited by his commitment to sound exegesis.

The arrogance of MacArthur leveling charges at all charismatic continuationist today as his means for rejecting us as “christian”, when the first century Corinthian church was guilty of the same fleshly chaos and even worse culpable behaviors and yet the Apostle Paul called them Redeemed Saints, the Temple of God, and brothers in Christ.

With that said, here are some of the best responses to the Strange fire conference.

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John Piper actually has better clarity on the work of the Holy Spirit than some within charismatic circles. Far to many are told to merely ask for Spirit Baptism and then believe/confess they’ve received. This is far less than what scripture describes and prescribes. Piper gets it right again!

rgh

“Now the positive thing I want to say about the moderate Pentecostal teaching (represented by the Bennets) is that it is right to stress the experiential reality of receiving the Spirit. When you read the New Testament honestly you can’t help but get the impression of a big difference from a lot of contemporary Christian experience. For them the Holy Spirit was a fact of experience. For many Christians today it is a fact of doctrine. Surely the Charismatic renewal has something to teach us here.

In sacramental churches the gift of the Holy Spirit is virtually equated with the event of water baptism. In Protestant evangelicalism it is equated with a subconscious work of God in regeneration which you only know you have because the Bible says you do if you believe. It is easy to imagine a spiritual counselor saying to a new convert today, “Don’t expect to notice any difference: just believe you have received the Spirit.” But that is far from what we see in the New Testament. The Pentecostals are right to stress the experience of being baptized in the Spirit.”

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About Richard Hanner

The husband of Regina, the father of Amanda, the grandfather of Andrew, Anna and Aaron, a church planter who now has the honor of serving some of the Kingdom’s finest Christ Followers in LaGrange, Georgia. [more]

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